An Expert Breaks Down Why Martin Margiela is Considered One of the Most Influential Designers Ever

Earlier this month, Parisian auction house Artcurial held a sale dedicated to legendary fashion designer Martin Margiela. The retrospective auction comprised 200 pieces, including rare and unusual items that helped to cement Margiela’s legacy as a groundbreaking, era-defining designer.

In the video above, Artcurial director of Hermès vintage and fashion arts Penélope Blanckaert walks Highsnobiety through a number of iconic designs featured in the auction, dissecting their cultural relevance and explaining how Margiela’s work revolutionized the fashion industry.

“Designers never really looked to the past, they had their sights set on the future,” Blanckaert explains. “Martin Margiela has this consistency in his work, as in he views the past as a collective testament and reinterprets it with his own vision in the present. He never ignores the past. Quite the opposite — he updates it.”

Blanckaert adds that while this approach might seem normal today, “in the ’90s that wasn’t the context at all.”

The sale coincided with two major anniversaries: the launch of Maison Martin Margiela in 1989 and the designer leaving his own fashion house in 2009. Check out the rest of the auction items in Artcurial’s archive here.

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